1

Arms up in space says my mother 
standing in my bedroom in 1976
and I hold up both my arms 
as to an altar or firing squad 
and the whole of the summerlong day
peels off of me broken glass
in the playground my skipping rope 
I think I must stagger slightly 
under the tug of the first 
few minutes of Kojak getting yanked
back over my head then tossed
on the floor like an animal 
my bear my white-paper folded
boat down comes my jammy-top
a quick pop and a poke of my two
hands out and I’m ready when I 
lower my wrists at last red planet-
dust glitters on my fingertips 

2

Give and whatever you give shall be 
given back urges our protagonist 
standing on the dock
in Stories From the Life of St Nicholas
not later not piecemeal his one visible 
arm bent impossibly at the wrist 
his tonsure covered in blood-red cloth
two blue angels coax grain 
from the sky as if wringing the palace
sheets while a single overturned 
barrel rains wheat on the ships
anchored in the harbour
as generously as they empty 
there is no deficit he insists in beneficent
syntax his head its own dazzle
when the universe is a weighscale
as finely calibrated as
this and this equals that 

3

Here is how you search a house
for evidence do not ring first
do not check if children
may be present wear HandSafe 
GN91 blue nitrile gloves downplay
the seriousness of the case for ease 
of access say routine say over 
soon underdress ascend and descend 
the stairs like Jacob wrestling 
the inevitable bring leaflets 
Feeling Suicidal Call This Number 
see-though plastic bags there will be 
plenty to take away too heavy 
to carry you must carry it anyway
call back later the woman
left standing in the wake 
of the arrest won’t have heard 
a word you’ve said 

4

Space sparkled above my head
when Pluto was still a planet 
but in summer got stagefright
what nightscene was this no stars
no intergalactic crackle just
the one sunset refusing 
to bleed out ABBA singing 
Money Money Money 
on repeat I lay awake listening 
to the estate dogs sirens catcalls 
a boy kicking a can
kicking a can along the alley 
inside was warm and safe beneath 
the blankets my brother beside me 
slurred murmur of my parents 
downstairs outside meant pocket- 
knives fires wild teenagers I never knew 
what they’d do next

5

They cut up the Majesty altarpiece
with knives and fretsaws
peeled off the Queen of Heaven 
from the Crucifixion front from back
the open gilded plain of Mary 
indigoed on her throne 
flanked by saints and angels 
from the busy killing boxwork 
of the Passion its minor parsimonies 
brutally cumulative no way out for Christ 
in these rooms and porticoes a cock
crows above his white blindfolding 
Mother of God be thou the cause
of peace for Siena and of life
for Duccio because he painted thee
thus each one of his twenty
worshipping angels 
wearing the same face 

6

Not hard to paint the devil
because he’s quicksilver-quick 
magnetism sparking from his fingertips 
hard to paint an absence or a lack 
negative integer defined purely
by its opposite far restive
starving galaxy charity
cannot touch hence 
this sad botched counterfoil
in The Temptation of Christ
charred remnant pulled inside-
out inadequate to the task whose powder
only serves to set the sky’s gold 
off the game was always
already up from the start
no matter the polish and flash 
of these cities or his black
coelacanth wings

7

In my house the devil took wing
through the wiring the routers
the plug-in signal boosters 
passed through me invisible
of all the ways to crash a family 
I could not have guessed this 
slick prince of the air 
I didn’t believe in stuck
fast in our fibreoptics of course 
he shrieked unmasked the day
I walked in from the post-office 
to workmen wisewomen woodcutters 
villagers prising him out 
of the walls with pliers 
the din was unspeakable not
me never me many me pity me 
as the door clicked shut 
behind him the house collapsed

8

Twice fixed sits Mary in her 
arabesque dress twice pinioned
Hail Full Of Grace The Lord
shooting towards her
out of this gatecrashing messenger’s
mouth as above her the dove
unleashes his tactical light-
strike pivot 
of history through whom love
enters whose yes permits not only
word made flesh but speech made actual
as a carpenter’s chisel raised up
in gilt and white no similar
picture exits in trecento
Italy fifteen years exactly before
that other crepuscular visitor 
comes lifting a bony finger yes you
and you and you and you and you

9

If in photographs
I cannot remember my children’s
faces when they were little their mutable
presences I remember their clothes 
this yellow t-shirt dipped 
in a Berlin fountain this navy
duffel coat worn on Petrovsky
Boulevard how many hours 
to fashion an angel’s 
tartar-cloth mantle in paint as many 
as made it two children blew 
through me but while 
they were with me I washed 
their clothes as carefully as for any
city saint or martyr a 
mortgage traded on water as all
love is a transit-
privilege 

10

By 1978 the game was up
for our stacked 
miraculous card-game
house its peppercorn rent
its scarlet pebbledash imagine if
words built streets say lake
and a blue sheet shimmers say school
library playground church
and they spring up from scratch
astonished checking their New Town 
teeth why is there always a catch 
to bewitchment the future 
flamed like acetylene 
round the derelict flats 
my friends left first 
I hung up my poncho 
on a digger bucket
before everything vanished 

This text, 'In All Our Clothes', is licensed under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license. No part of the Work may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purposes of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems. The Work is protected and reserved from text and data mining.